Answer to the previous blog title question: HE LACKS THE BALLS. He is more concerned with LBGTQ issues and the Global Warming Wealth Redistribution Plan. He (and HRC) are more interested in making sure no one gets their sensitivities violated. This is a continuation of the Apology Tour he started 7.5 years ago. He will go down as the worse President in my life time. The experiment didn't work.

Posing as a non-political solidarity organization, the Syria Campaign leverages local partners and media contacts to push the U.S. into toppling another Middle Eastern government.

The article is kind of long. It discusses the various labyrinthian relationships and funding for and between the various NGO’s we see in the news daily, White Helmets, USAID, etc. and the parts they play in promoting an agenda that includes foreign intervention and regime change. It discusses the parts these various organizations play in forcing UN aid efforts out of Syria, in pushing for no-fly zones and safe areas in Syria the same way they did in Libya (which could involve the introduction of up to 75,000 US troops to implement and could lead to direct conflict with Russia, Assad, and their allies), and the exploitation of various incidents for propaganda purposes like the video that went viral of a five-year-old boy, Omran Daqneesh, who had been extracted from a building by members of the White Helmets.

The lesson is that anytime you see USAID mentioned in a story you know that you are in the middle of a clusterfuck the US should have never gotten themselves into.

The Obama administration’s plan to spend an estimated $1 trillion dollars over 30 years on rebuilding the nation’s nuclear facilities and modernizing nuclear weapons was part of an effort in 2014 to control nuclear arms globally. Instead, The New York Times reports, “the United States, Russia and China are now aggressively pursuing a new generation of smaller, less destructive nuclear weapons…[which] threaten to revive a Cold War-era arms race….”

The Fiscal Times requested and was granted permission from the Federation of American Scientists to reprint this article on Nuclear Transparency and the Stockpile Stewardship and Management Plan by Hans M. Kristensen.

I was reading the latest Stockpile Stewardship and Management Plan from the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) and wondering what I should pick to critique the Obama administration’s nuclear policy.

After all, there are plenty of issues that deserve to be addressed, including:

Why NNSA continues to overspend, over-commit, and create a spending bow wave in 2021-2026 in excess of the President’s budget in exactly the same time period that excessive Air Force and Navy modernization programs are expected to put the greatest pressure on defense spending?

Why a smaller and smaller nuclear weapons stockpile with fewer warhead types appears to be getting more and more expensive to maintain?

Why each warhead life-extension program is getting ever more ambitious and expensive with no apparent end in sight?

And why a policy of reductions, no new nuclear weapons, no pursuit of new military missions or new capabilities for nuclear weapons, restraint, a pledge to “put an end to Cold War thinking,” and the goal of disarmament, instead became a blueprint for nuclear overreach with record funding, across-the-board modernizations, unprecedented warhead modifications, increasing weapons accuracy and effectiveness, reaffirmation of a Triad and non-strategic nuclear weapons, continuation of counterforce strategy, reaffirmation of the importance and salience of nuclear weapons, and an open-ended commitment to retain nuclear weapons further into the future than they have existed so far?

Initially, I thought Obama was clueless and had no strategy. Since October, 2015 when Russia entered the game, his earlier strategy seems clearer to me, not pretty, but clearer. One thing is certain there are no good guys in Syria.

My fear is that Obama still has 3 months to go and he may push premature moves in Syria such as the Mosul offensive in an effort to pad his resume before he leaves office.

As to the other posts you put up, either last night or the night before I checked out the front pages of the NYT and the WaPO, two of the most influential papers in the US. The stories above the line were all about Trump and the election, Trump's tax return, Trump saying how brilliant he was, Juliani's sexist rant about Trump, a 'man' as brilliant businessman and a 'woman' costing the FBI, more on the Mercado story, and Trump suggesting Hillary was cheating on Bill. All the news stations were doing the same.

This is what the masses are fed in this country.

In the Times of Israel, the headline was US breaks off diplomatic talks with Russia on Syria, the UN Security Council is considering demanding a truce in Aleppo, Russia is saying the US is aiding the ISIS and the militants in Syria.

This country would rather talk about some ex-beauty queen than the fact that Pakistan is threatening to use nuclear weapons against India or that India is thinking about damning up the water flow to Pakistan.

Bill Clinton only briefly mentioned health care in multiple appearances Tuesday in eastern Ohio, clearly stating his support for the law and arguing that more still must be done to expand access to insurance.

It was a far cry from the former president's Monday remarks that continued to reverberate, prompting responses from Hillary Clinton, the White House and Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump.

"You've got this crazy system where all the sudden 25 million more people have health care," Bill Clinton said in Flint, Michigan, "and then the people are out there busting it, sometimes 60 hours a week, wind up with their premiums doubled and their coverage cut in half.

On the economy, Kaine asks if Americans want a "You're hired" president in Hillary Clinton or a "You're fired" president in Donald Trump. He says Trump has said wages are too high and that the minimum wage should be abolished.

Kaine calls Pence a "one man bulwark" against the minimum wage in Indiana.

“Kaine came off as a jerk. I actually like that guy and I was really disappointed in him,” one person in the focus group said.

“Face the Nation” moderator John Dickerson called Tuesday night’s debate a “bickerfest.”

“Tim Kaine, from the word go, was interrupting and kept interrupting all night. He seemed insistent on getting across the bad news about Donald Trump. He repeatedly tried to get Mike Pence to defend Donald Trump, and often Gov. Pence resisted that temptation,” Dickerson said.

He continued, “Unlike Donald Trump in the last debate, Mike Pence was well prepared and he didn’t take the bait and in many instances he just let Tim Kaine keep interrupting.”

Haitian authorities called on the peacekeepers of the UN Stabilisation Mission in Haiti to assist in the response to the hurricane, said Ariane Quentier, a spokeswoman for the mission. But with the storm still raging, there was little they could do.

...

"We're seeing enormous amounts of flooding, enormous amounts of wind damage," said John Hasse, national director for the aid organization World Vision in Haiti. Before Matthew made landfall, staffers had been trying to persuade people to get to safe structures, he said.

"Yet right up until the storm hit, we still heard many people saying, 'We're waiting on God' and not making preparations," Hasse said. He said the charity has warehouses stocked with blankets, tarps, water cans and hygiene kits to assist nearly 100,000 people, but "we expect it to go well over a million to even millions of people affected by this."

Magnificent Ronald and the Founding Fathers of al Qaeda

“These gentlemen are the moral equivalents of America’s founding fathers.” — Ronald Reagan while introducing the Mujahideen leaders to media on the White house lawns (1985). During Reagan’s 8 years in power, the CIA secretly sent billions of dollars of military aid to the mujahedeen in Afghanistan in a US-supported jihad against the Soviet Union. We repeated the insanity with ISIS against Syria.